About Us

David Monroe here,

    My initial martial arts training was in Japanese Karate, having been convinced that it would give me a "solid" foundation. I trained off-and-on for ten years with Soke Tak Kubota, and another ten with Sensei Takiyuki Mikami.  I loved the art, and I taught it for about fifteen years.  

     Finally, disillusioned after 21 years, I was desperate for some "real" martial training, and, by the grace of the Almighty, I discovered Sifu Francis Fong, and, through him, Guru Dan Inosanto. Both men had a profound influence on my understanding of the concepts of body dynamics and weapons.

     In 1989 Guru Dan Inosanto had finished his seminar in Atlanta- at Francis Fong’s Academy, and we were sitting on some steps, talking about how we had already ruined our hands for the past 20 years by beating them on Makiwaras, breaking boards, and getting smashed by elbows, knees and feet...and now we were hitting them with sticks and daggers.

    We laughed and talked about how much Arthritis we were going to have, and now we were just compiling the damages. He mentioned that a student in Australia had made some soft sticks. He had put a rattan stick inside pipe foam for use at a seminar. I asked him if it was OK to make a version of the same thing, and use them for seminars here. He said it was a good idea, and after breaking dozens of different models, over months of development, the concept finally came together.

    Our technology is a combination of a core that won’t shatter, custom-made, open-cell high quality foam, closed-cell high impact pads on the tips, all glued together and covered with a coating of liquid rubber created a “Soft” padded stick that let the impact get to the core and then bounce back! Our foam has terrific “compression/deflection” properties that allow practitioners to spar Full Contact with both sticks, daggers, and all the other tools of the martial artists trade... without blunt trauma injury from the strikes, giving them “Experience without Injury”, allowing them to beat the fool out of each other and still go to work the next day.

    We invite you to share in these experiences. Sof-Stx sparring is the most fun of all your martial training and definitely increases your combat skills!

    Learn to play and play to learn.